


Small Graces

by bookoftheazuresky



Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: Kissing, M/M, mentions of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 04:58:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky
Summary: Small drabbles from Tales of Graces, mostly having to do with Richard and Asbel.





	1. I could kiss you

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt "I could kiss you!"

Richard was a wonderful, thoughtful person. Asbel had noticed it as a child, the way he seemed to light up when he could do something that people liked. Even years at the center of the attention of a bunch of backstabbing sycophants didn't manage to beat it out of him, at least where his friends were concerned.

So it wasn't in the least surprising that he'd brought a selection of flower seeds as a present for Sophie when he'd come to visit Lhant.

"Richard, I could _kiss you_ ," Asbel managed, too impressed to mind what he was saying. Sophie had been drooping for a _week_ because a late frost had wiped out her beloved flowers. Suddenly, she was all smiles again. She'd even hugged Richard before vanishing to plant her new acquisitions.

Asbel was too preoccupied watching her out the window to be anything other than surprised when Richard gently gripped his shoulder and their lips met. It was over in a moment, a flush of embarrassment rising in both their cheeks.

"I-I'm sorry," Richard stuttered, utterly at odds with his usual poise. "I'm not sure what came over me-" His eyes were terrified. Asbel couldn't help but respond to it.

He closed the distance between them with a jerk, pressing a swift peck to Richard's stuttering mouth. Richard's white-gloved hand came to press at his lips, as if he couldn't believe that Asbel had kissed him back.

They might have stayed there forever if Sophie hadn't come barging back in. "I need help planting the seeds," she announced.

"O-of course," Richard said, turning something like his usual radiant smile on her. "We should help, right, Asbel?" Something eased in Asbel's chest at the wondering look in his eyes.

"Right."


	2. dreaming

Asbel knew he was dreaming because he was laying in the Lhant meadow on Richard’s lap, and that was impossible. Not that he hadn't had dreams about this place after he had gone to the Knight Academy, but if he saw Richard in those dreams, it was the child he remembered. This Richard was the lovely adult he had traveled with so briefly before everything went so wrong.

Long fingers traced through his auburn hair. He realized that the fingers were bare, not gloved as was Richard’s custom. The thought was whisked away as Richard leaned over him, his eyes unutterably sad as long strands of blond hair fell around them. If there was a tragedy that Asbel regretted most, it was that he had been unable to erase those shadows from Richard’s eyes, that the wary child he had been was drowned in darkness. He really was a failure, unable to protect his king, his friend…

Richard kissed him there in the gentle sunlight, his mouth soft and trembling. Asbel didn’t even question it, just raised a hand to twine in the golden strands that cut them off from the world. He returned the chaste press of lips.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as Richard left his lips. Richard’s eyes were full of tears, thin trickles tracing his fine-boned face. Asbel felt answering tears prick his own eyes. “I’m so sorry.”


	3. endurance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look inside Richard's head after he drains Duplemar.

It isn’t until after absorbing Duplemar’s eleth that Richard truly understands how difficult this task is going to be. He’d grown used to Lambda’s strength and vitality, a wellspring of power that he’d drawn on since childhood in order to survive. Once that power had quickened his heart back to its proper rhythm, he’d been able to draw on more, opening up skills that were beyond the reach of any mortal user of the cryas artes. Even taking in all of Gloandi’s eleth had been simple; the people of Windor who grew up in the shadow of its valkines often had an affinity for wind and Richard was no exception. The power had slid into the core of his being like a sword being sheathed, swift and easy.

This is different. It feels as if his body is coming apart at the seams. Sweat drips from his forehead to sizzle on the slab of stone he’d directed the wyvern to land on, his hands braced against the ground as he struggles to _breathe_. It’s too much. Humans aren’t meant to contain this much eleth at once; it courses through the natural paths inside his body like a flash flood through a shallow creek bed.

He jerks as Lambda _pulls_ on the raging flood of Duplemar’s eleth, forcing it to his will. Reluctantly, the power settles into the same place where Gloandi’s eleth rests, deep inside his body where Lambda had tied them together to keep them both alive. He had an impression of threads of shadow wrapped around fresh green and deep blue before the feeling cuts off, leaving him slumped on a rock at midday in the Strahtan desert.

_We must press on,_ Lambda tells him. Richard wearily assents. He no longer feels as though his skin will burst, but he’s still too full for anything like comfort. It’s the feeling of balancing a glass of water to keep it from spilling multiplied by a thousand, _inside_ his body where no such sensation belongs.

Even his trained will, honed by years of pain, is not enough to push the awareness from him as he climbs awkwardly onto the back of the wyvern waiting patiently to take him onward.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually written for the 2015 Tales Secret Santa. I liked it, but it didn't really get beyond this.

Richard sat in the Turtlez Transport, knees drawn up to his chest. It was dark and stuffy inside the transport, since he’d been forbidden from opening the windows to look out, but on the other hand, no one could look in and see that he had his feet on the seat either. The whole trip he’d alternated between tense alertness and boredom- the whole reason he was being sent to Lhant was because Barona had become too dangerous for the crown prince. Too many people came through Windor’s capital for even the tightest security to be really secure.

So his father had decided that Richard needed to be sent away. It was a mark of how serious things were that he was being sent to Lhant- which, after all, shared its border with Fendel. Even nearly twelve years after the last war, relations between Windor and Fendel were less than cordial. And there was a very real chance that Fendel had its hand in trying to get rid of Richard.

It was also a mark of just how highly his father held Aston Lhant’s loyalty that he was being entrusted with Richard’s safety. His father had considered sending him to Gralesyde and Duke Dalen, but ultimately Lhant’s relative isolation had won out.

Richard examined the ring his father had given to him shortly before he’d left. It was a deceptively simple design, a gold band that gripped a fragment of Gloandi in its four prongs. For a treasure of the royal house it was unusually subtle. The ring was something of the reason that Richard was being sent to Lhant- those rare times that it left the care of the royal family, it was given to those who had sworn to protect them. The Eleth sword, the treasure of the royal house that it belonged with, had been given to Aston Lhant the year before he was born, but the lord had refused to take the ring or the position of Champion when they were offered.

It baffled Richard that someone would refuse such an offer. He was constantly beset with people seeking to curry favor and gain even the slightest bit of influence that a prince’s attention could bring them. The thought that his father had not only offered that but had been refused was nearly unthinkable.

A polite knock on the door of the carriage roused him from his contemplations. Richard hastily resumed his proper seat, composing himself to ask, “What is it?”

“We’ve arrived, Your Highness,” his escort said.

~

His first impression of Lhant was of the compromise between utilitarian and provincial style. Most of the town was built of gray stone, a forbidding counterpoint to the fortress walls that surrounded it. Even the cheerful blue tile of the roofs and the red banners with Windor’s crest couldn’t entirely dispel the aura of a border town, just a little bit wary.

Aston Lhant had the same combination of utilitarian and provincial as the town, his manner stiff and harsh. A soldier’s manner, Richard thought. Maybe that was why his father like this man- he seemed like someone who would be a reassurance on a battlefield. Supposedly he was a very accomplished swordsman too.

Richard looked around the guest room he’d been given. The manor’s foyer had the look of a guard outpost converted into a living space, and for all the attempts made to soften this room with carpets and hangings, the gray stone walls told the same story. He sank onto the bed closest to the window. The drapes had been closed just as the ones in his carriage had been, though the room was big enough that it wasn’t as stuffy, thankfully.

It was still _stifling_. Richard was a child of wind, born in the shadow of Windor’s valkines cryas. He’d borne up under the increasing security he’d been surrounded with, but he was slowly smothering, a flower under glass. He hoped fervently that he would finally get a chance to breathe, before he wilted away to an empty husk that simply counterfeited the manner of a prince without anything underneath.

His prayers were answered not an hour later when Asbel Lhant tumbled in through his window in a rush of sunlight and clear air, a blessing utterly desired.


	5. Richard on Lambda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why did Richard take Lambda back?

Even now, Richard was not quite sure _why_ he reached out to Lambda once again after Emeraude attempted- and failed- to harness Lamba’s powers.

Part of it was undoubtedly simple confusion. Having Lambda ripped unceremoniously away from his secure intermingling with Richard’s eleth channels had _hurt._ Richard had been poisoned, and nearly stabbed to death. The sensation did not compare in the _least_ to having what amounted to a part of his body, maybe even his _soul_ , torn free, still struggling. Fresh off of that, it was no wonder that he’d sought to remedy the pain in the only way he knew how.

Another part of it was…that Lambda was just about the only person who had _always_ been there for him. A father wrapped up with ruling a kingdom, an uncle that literally wanted him dead, a distant ducal cousin…children his own age who had been there for only a few days, no matter how pure their intentions. Lambda was _there_.

Lambda was the one who hummed in concentration as he fixed stress fractures in Richard’s arms from sword practice with guards who swore they had his best interest at heart, their hands had just slipped. Lambda was the one who noted the faint scent of wind eleth in the room whose window had been left ajar to let in an ‘unknown assassin.’ Lambda was the one who promised, ever more firmly, that Cedric _would_ be held accountable for his actions when Richard shook with fever and nausea in a remote corner of the castle gardens from the new, exotic poison that his uncle had acquired this month.

Lambda was the one who had bound him to life, at that last, uttermost extreme, hooking fingers into his soul and refusing to let go.

They had not been good for each other. Richard could admit it. They both needed light to balance them, to pull Richard out of his brooding and quench Lambda’s anger. But that deep, unspoken sympathy had endured to extremity. Richard had, near blind with pain, believed that Lambda would _save him._ After all, that was what Lambda had _always_ done.

And there was just another small part, born of that sympathy, that knew how much Emeraude had _hurt_ Lambda. In that moment when he’d pulled Lambda back to him, Richard had wanted to provide what comfort, what succor, he could. For what Lambda had suffered far in the past at her hands, and for the new injuries that she had inflicted in her cruel use. That was, after all, why their partnership had originally come to be- to heal both of their wounds.

To take Lambda back was not the right decision for either of them. Richard knew that now. He had even known it _then_. But he didn’t quite regret it either.


End file.
